Professor Lana Jageillonska
Academic and Professional Career Among certain circles in the Wizarding community the name Lana Jageillonska carries with it a great amount of respect, even reverence, for she is one of the most important witch diplomats of last century. Born May 3, 1964, in Gdańsk, Poland, Lana is a human-Atlantean hybrid. Her mother, who was distantly related to the Jageillonian dynasty, had fallen in love with a merman. Relationships between Atlanteans and humans were extraordinarily rare, with the last known relationship over a century ago. So Lana’s status as half Atlantean is certainly unique. She attended Wieliczka in southern Poland, an underground school more secretive than most Wizarding schools due to the heightened tensions under communist rule. She excelled at most classes, particularly magic law, and did very well in physiomancy. So much so that she qualified as a medic under the Guidelines for Magical Healers. Of course, due to her unusual heritage she took on independent studies involving Atlantean history, culture, and their diplomatic relations with the greater wizard community. She graduated during the height of communist brutality, witnessing the enforcement of martial law by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Although she was immediately offered a job as a diplomat to the Merpeople she declined in order to help her mother’s people by assisting a group known as Solidarity. And they were in dire need of her assistance. Solidarity was using methods of civil resistance to bring about social change, but they desperately needed funding and Lana worked behind the scenes as a key diplomatic figure in securing finances from the US. Unfortunately, she was also witness to some of NKVD’s more brutal methods and was actually imprisoned on several occasions. Eventually, Solidarity would win and the free elections of 1989 signaled to Lana that she could now help her father’s people in Altlantis, the capital of the Merfolk. Taking the job from the Ministry as the Diplomat to Atlantis Lana had her hands full yet again. Despite attending the International Wizard Council of 1692 the Atlanteans never came to trust humans, and the history between Atlantis and the wizarding world had been fraught with tension. The Atlanteans had even refused to be legally designated as sentient beings in the early 1800’s due to Vampires and Hags being in the same category. However, Lana’s skills as a diplomat were indeed legendary, and after only half a decade she had worked through centuries of distrust and deceit to form a lasting treaty with Atlantis. So successful were her efforts that Merpeople were invited by the Ministry to be involved in the 1994 triwizard tournament, and the Merfolk agreed! Such a resounding success was unheard of in the diplomatic community and Lana is still considered a legend by many. Knowing that peace is never a constant, she worked for several more years as the Atlantean diplomat. Having laid the essential framework for lasting peace between wizards and Merfolk, Lana finally decided to do something she had always wanted to do, teach. With her credentials she easily would have been accepted as a professor at any school, and once her availability was known she received a plethora of offers. She chose Hogwarts, taking a position teaching Magic Oceanic Creatures and Atlantean Relations and Diplomacy. Since joining the staff at Hogwarts she has been a valued member of its faculty. Helping many of her students and her fellow colleagues. Recently, she received the terrible news that her father, who was the High Commander of the Atlantean Protectorate, had died, and she has been asked to return to Atlantis. Unfortunately due to the school’s lockdown and numerous other problems, she has yet to leave the school. Personal Life Lana is trilingual. She speaks Polish, Mermish, and English. She is one of only a handful of people to have successfully mastered the Mermish language. She enjoys reading and dancing. Lana is highly adept at capture spells. Due to her Atlantean heritage Lana ages differently than normal humans. The average age of an Atlantean is 150 years.